Top all-time · #1782
Mary Rose Cook
Personal blog · maryrosecook.com · on HN as maryrosecookprogrammingaicareer
Mary Rose Cook's personal blog at maryrosecook.com covers programming, ai and career. Since 2008, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 68 times, most often “Git from the inside out”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Essays, talks and projects by Mary Rose Cook
Most-linked posts?
- Git from the inside out9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-04-27
- A practical introduction to functional programming (2013)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-07-18
- Git from the inside-out4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-05-10
- Little Lisp interpreter3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-05-22
- Git in six hundred words3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-22
- A practical introduction to functional programming3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-25
- Become an AI-Augmented Engineer2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-05
- Responding to a student's request for help2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-08-22
- Using encapsulated development to code on my phone2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-25
- Git in six hundred words2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-22
What Hacker News says?
There's also this from the same author: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words She's a really clear informative writer
Comment linking /blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words
on “Git from the inside out”Submitted A practical introduction to functional programming (2013) as a story · 319 points
HN discussionThis is great, thanks for sharing. People in this thread might also appreciate this essay: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words And the more expanded version: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out It really helped me comprehend Git enough to start understanding the more complex work flows.
Comment linking /blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
on “Write yourself a Git (2018)”Submitted Git in six hundred words as a story · 286 points
HN discussionI really liked your "Git in 600 words.[1]" I think it will help clear up some confusion for some of my VCS wary colleagues. 1. http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words
Comment linking /blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words
on “Gitlet: Git implemented in JavaScript”Submitted Dijkstra’s algorithm and the Fibonacci heap as a story · 244 points
HN discussionI wrote a short post about how and why I made Gitlet: http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/introducing-gitlet
Comment linking /blog/post/introducing-gitlet
on “Gitlet: Git implemented in JavaScript”Submitted A practical introduction to functional programming as a story · 240 points
HN discussionYou might like to try Write yourself a Git [0] (discussed here previously [1]). YMMV, but I find the best way to learn something deeply is to get hands on. Less of a chance of convincing yourself you understand something that you really don’t. For less of a time commitment, Git from the inside out [2] is a really nice explanation of the internals, from initializing a repo and the files that creates in the .git direc…
Comment linking /blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
on “John Carmack: Career Advice”Submitted Little Lisp interpreter as a story · 117 points
HN discussionThis reminds me a bit of Mary Rose Cook's story, "When I died": http://maryrosecook.com/post/when-i-died-2
Comment linking /post/when-i-died-2
on “What it’s like to die”Submitted How I implemented 2D collision detection in Pistol Slut as a story · 90 points
HN discussionRelated: http://gitlet.maryrosecook.com/ Gitlet is an implemention of Git in JavaScript. https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
Comment linking /blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
on “Show HN: Pygit – Just enough git to push itself to GitHub”Submitted Andro.js as a story · 49 points
HN discussionI know it feels a tad hipsterish etc...but Mary Rose Cook works there and I think she seems smart, practical and not at all vague: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/a-practical-introduction-...
Comment linking /blog/post/a-practical-introduction-to-functional-programming
on “Five Years of Recurse Center”Submitted My Node.js app, or, a simple explanation of asynchronicity and non-blocking IO as a story · 47 points
HN discussionDon't think this is the one you're thinking of, but I do like Mary Rose Cook's intro to fp using Python: http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/a-practical-introduction-t...
Comment linking /blog/post/a-practical-introduction-to-functional-programming
on “Functional Programming in Python [pdf]”Submitted Little Lisp Interpreter (2014) as a story · 46 points
HN discussionJust in case, a few years back I've seen an article on functional programming in python. Mostly arithmetic but the patterns were very pretty (think Euclid algorithm generalized). I never managed to find it again. If that rings a bell to someone, I'll be forever virtually indebted. - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-prog/ - http://kachayev.github.io/talks/uapycon2012/#/ - http://anandology.com/python-pract…
Comment linking /blog/post/a-practical-introduction-to-functional-programming
on “Functional Programming in Python [pdf]”Submitted Git from the inside out as a story · 44 points
HN discussionYesterday I was reading this blogpost ( http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/scarface-prince-of-the-cit... ) so as soon as I clicked this link I thought no way can a computer learn to do what I read yesterday on its own! I had read headlines about computer-generated images but had never seen them, yet I managed 9/10, anticipating that an artist's technique is not just relation between color etc. but a philosophy. Edit:…
Comment linking /blog/post/scarface-prince-of-the-city-and-pieter-de-hooch
on “Visual Turing Test”Submitted Git in six hundred words as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThis article/video by Mary Rose Cook is helpful: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
Comment linking /blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
on “Git as a NoSql Database (2016)”Submitted Git from the Inside Out as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSeems like some images are broken on that link...here is an alternate version: http://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
Comment linking /blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out
on “Git from the inside out”Submitted A practical introduction to functional programming as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere's another article on FP in Python for those who'd rather an alternate than go to kite.com. https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/a-practical-introduction-... Edit: After scanning the kite.com article for a second time, I see the author actually links to Mary Rose Cook's article.
Comment linking /blog/post/a-practical-introduction-to-functional-programming
on “Best Practices for Using Functional Programming in Python”Submitted Git from the inside-out as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere is an explanation, it's the top when when I googled "easy explanation of functional programming." https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/a-practical-introduction-... Please read it. Do you know functional programming now? Do you get it? Do you get the point of it? Did you "grok" the whole reason that the functional paradigm exists? In my opinion that article fails to meet the test. In its very first paragraph it ca…
Comment linking /blog/post/a-practical-introduction-to-functional-programming
on “The Two Types of Knowledge: The Max Planck/Chauffeur Test (2015)”Submitted A practical introduction to functional programming as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
